Question

HUMANITIES. Reading about artists in Paris reacting to social conditions and working to make a change. Can you think of an artist or artists working today to promote social change? Do you think their work is effective? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Many artists today are deeply committed to creating work that addresses pressing social issues and changes the way we perceive the world. In her work, Cuban artist Tania Bruguera grapples with issues of power and control. Yet she uses an uncommon medium like humans to create her installations and performances. Through her job, she may become an active participant in creative production by a single passerby or a whole local group. This type of art, which has been gaining momentum since the 1960s, can go by many names: socially engaged practice, community art, new genre public art, and activist art, among others. What unites these approaches is a new take on who holds the power, shifting agency away from institutions and even artists, and giving ordinary people the ability to create meaningful change in unprecedented ways.

As part of the Hyundai Commission, Tania Bruguera brought together a group of residents local to Tate Modern to shape her project. Such Tate Neighbors have curated a series of community workshops at Tate Exchange, working to share their experience and equipping guests with the skills to bring about change in their local community. But they also created a lasting impact in the gallery, drawing up their own manifesto for art and social action, and even renaming an entire gallery building after local volunteer and activist Natalie Bell.

The art lies in the people who take part in it, the actions they take, and the change they create. Instead of just portraying or reflecting the power structures around us, activist or socially engaged art addresses those structures directly. In doing so, it becomes a kind of social or political currency and creates conditions for society to shift. It is useful art.

And there were artists who took this activity out into the world. Theaster Gates has been creating spaces for groups to meet and freely address the problems that concern them, from race to politics to regeneration, since the early 2000s. His Dorchester Projects took a number of abandoned buildings in Chicago's South Side and financed their redevelopment into a community hub of artists' studios, libraries, and performance rooms through the sale of artworks made from local scrap materials. In an increasingly unpredictable world, artists who work in social practice are giving us the tools to better understand, analyze and alter our position in it.